Steve Clark founded the Mississippi Contemporary Art Center as a way to discover and promote new talent in the state after moving back to Mississippi from Chicago in 2016. Photo courtesy Imani Khayyam

​Most people can pinpoint a time or event where their love of something began. Steve Clark traces his passion for contemporary art to his 20 years living in Chicago.

Clark, a Mt. Olive, Miss., native and Millsaps College graduate, left Mississippi in 1993 to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he received his master's degree in visual communications.

After graduating in 1995, he started working as a time-arts researcher for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and then for other galleries around the city.

"These were smaller galleries in Chicago," Clark says. "I would find artists who hadn't been in the scene really, and I wanted to pull them out and bring them into the spotlight, and that's been my passion. There are so many artists who get to be shown, but there are some that get left by the wayside."

That is the mindset that Clark has maintained since he moved back to the state in 2016 and began the Mississippi Contemporary Art Center.

"The thing in my life I've always wanted to do was open a contemporary art gallery," Clark says.

Clark wants his gallery to feature what he calls "outsider artists," those who are not formally trained in the arts but are instead self-taught, with an emphasis on experiential and experimental artwork.

For its inaugural exhibition in December 2016, the Mississippi Contemporary Art Center featured local artist T.J. Legler, who created his pieces by lighting up a piece of steel wool and photographing it while moving it. Clark says the event had about 80 people in attendance and received so much attention that they decided to keep Legler's pieces on display at Coalesce (109 N. State St.) for the time being.

"T.J. is a very interesting guy, and what I like about his work is that it's performance," Clark says. "He's making a statement about this temporal reality. The light is only there for a second, but when he takes a photo of it, it becomes something that lasts forever."

“Beach Fires” was one of T.J. Legler’s pieces for the Missisippi Contemporary Art Center’s first exhibition in December 2016. Photo courtesy Imani Khayyam

​The next exhibition is set for spring of this year and will be a group exhibit called "Meta • Contemporary." The show will feature eight local contemporary artists, including Legler, social and political artist Johnnie Mae Maberry, painters Cherie Clark Hamel and Justin Ransburg, and Eli Childers, who will do a live performance at the opening.

"The show will answer the question, 'What is contemporary about contemporary?'" Clark says. "They're going to answer questions about our contemporary life, and the answers to those question will be unique to each artist."

While Legler's exhibit took place at Coalesce, that will not be the case for every MCAC event. Clark says the center will be moving around and mounting exhibitions in Jackson, specifically in unused and unexpected spaces.

"In the first year, we're not going to be gallery in a dedicated space," he says.

"We're going to do pop-up galleries that enrich the neighborhood and involve the community. We're going to do things like put brand new floors in places, brand new lighting, have the exhibition and then leave it in a better place than we found it."

"That's the plan for 2017," Clark says. "In 2018, the Mississippi Contemporary Art Center (will be looking for) its own permanent space, and I'm hoping it will be in Jackson."